The two most important points I like to make about immigration
and ethnicity in America are the two I made in the workshop: first the
importance of networks in the immigration process- Tilly, Charles. “Transplanted
Networks,” in Virginia Yans McLaughlin ed., Immigration Reconsidered:
History, Sociology and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990), pp. 79 -95 ; Gjerde, Jon, “Following the Chain,” Immigration
and Ethnic History Newsletter, May 2001, p. 1,3 – and second
the way ethnic groups change over time.- Conzen, Kathleen, David Gerber,
Ewa Morawska and George Pozzetta, “The Invention of Ethnicity: A
Perspective from the U.S.A.,” Journal of American Ethnic History
(Fall 1992) Volume 12, no. 1, pp. 3-41 and (long, international version)
Horowitz, Donald. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. (Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 2000) (see Kazal, Russell. “Revisiting
Assimilation: The Rise, fall and Reappraisal of a Concept in American
Ethnic History,” American Historical Review 1995 Volume
100 no. 2, pp. 437-471, for a more traditional assimilationist approach,
and Conzen, Kathleen “Mainstreams and Side Channels: The Localization
of Immigrant Cultures,” Journal of American Ethnic History
(Fall 1991) Volume 11, no.1, pp. 5-19, for an interesting take on the
importance of regional variations in ethnic adjustments.). Other ideas
that have become important of late are whiteness – how immigrants
learn they are white and thus privileged, Barrett, James R. and David
Roediger, “Inbetween Peoples: race, nationality and the ‘New
Immigrant’ Working Class,” Journal of American Ethnic
History (1997) Volume 16, no. 3, pp. 3-44, and the importance of
groups who see themselves as diaspora people. Not members of their new
nation: Kenny, Kevin, “Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish
as a Case Study,” Journal of American History (June 2003)
Volume 90, no. 1, pp. 134 and Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction.
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997)

Overviews and Reference Material

Taylor, Philip. The Distant Magnet: European Emigration
to the U.S.A. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) Very handy on changes
in transportation, immigrant guides, the entire mechanics of migration

Jones, Maldwyn. American Immigration. (Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press, 1992). Not as helpful as Taylor but still useful.

Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race and Nation in
the Twentieth
Century. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). More a very
bold interpretation of ethnicity and race in Twentieth century America,
but interesting about the changing place of white ethnics in that century.

Thernstrom, Stephan. Harvard Encyclopedia of American
Ethnic Groups.
(Cambridge: Belknap press, 1980). Just what it says, a huge, well done
encyclopedia with substantive entries on groups and other topics.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration
and Ethnicity
in American Life (New York: Perennial, 2002). A very good introduction
by group with good statistics and helpful summaries of each.

Bayor, Ronald. The Columbia Documentary History of Race
and Ethnicity in
America. (New York: Columbia University press, 2004). This is more
than ethnicity because it talks about blacks as well, but a good introduction
to changing conditions of race and ethnicity and each essay is flowed
by a score or more documents.

Multi Group Studies

Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The Nineteenth Century
New York City
Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World’s
Most Notorious Slum. (New York: Free Press, 2001). Very readable
and powerfully descriptive book detailing the lives of succeeding waves
of immigrants in the Five Points (Lower East Side) section of New York.
Largely about the Irish, it also discusses Italians, Chinese and Germans
and Jews.

Barton, Josef. Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians,
and Slovaks in
an American City 1890-1950. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1975). Barton too emphasizes immigrant chains, and does a great job on
it.

Diner, Hasia. Hungering For America: Italian, Irish
and Jewish Foodways in
the Age of Migration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Terrific book on food and ethnic identity.

Foner, Nancy. From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s
Two great Waves of
Immigration. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Excellent
comparison of turn of the twentieth century immigration, Jews and Italians,
to turn of the twenty first century, on virtually every topic (except
religion), economic achievement, family and gender roles, education and
schools. Dense but very good.

Gabaccia, Donna. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and
the Making of
Americans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1998). Less interested
in how food is important to identity than how ethnic food was or was not
incorporated into American cuisine.

Gjerde, Jon. The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution
in the Rural
Midwest, 1830-1917. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1997). Terrific study of the settlement of the Midwest by immigrants and
Yankees from New England. Shows the importance of migration chains, family
and community structures, clashing values in a rural setting.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Special Sorrows: The Diasporic
Imagination of Irish,
Polish and Jewish Immigrants in the United States. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1995). An interesting look at how attitudes about the
old country’s national fate influenced the approach of three immigrant
group’s to American imperialism in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century.

Smith, Judith E. Family Connections: A History of Italian
and Jewish
Immigrant Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900-1940. (Albany:
State University of New York, 1985). Nice book that documents brilliantly
the tightness of immigrant families -how the children of immigrants lived
with or close to their parents often into middle age.

Vecoli, Rudolph and Suzanne Sinke eds. A Century of
European Migrations,
1830-1930 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1991).
Great essays here by Gjerde, Ramirez, Alexander and others on groups from
Hungarians, Slovaks and Norwegians to French Canadians. They emphasize
networks in the migration process.

Nativism or anti immigrant movements, legislation
and citizenship

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American
Nativism, 1860-
1925. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1955).
An old book, but still brilliant and nicely written, Higham shows how
and why anti immigrant movements rose and fell in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century.

Anbinder, Tyler. Nativism and Slavery: The Northern
Know Nothings and the
Politics of the 1850s. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
An interesting book that points out how the Know Nothing ant immigrant
crusade was fueled by frustration over slavery.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color:
European
Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1998) The best book on a topic of recent great interest, changing
racist thought in America and its influence on attitudes about immigrants.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Italians, Jews and
others in addition to blacks were considered racial inferiors.

Gyory, Andrew. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics and
the Chinese Exclusion
Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press, 1998). A very
readable, richly researched but controversial book on the passage of the
Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Gyory blames the politicians, not white
workers, for exclusion.

Individual groups

The literature on separate groups is vast – the number
of good books on Jewish Americans or Irish Americans for example could
fill several pages. These are just books that I liked. They include some
that have a broader purview than America – Bielienberg on the Irish,
Gabaccia’s Diasporas on Italians, Luebke on Germans – because
I think broader contexts and the potential for comparisons to immigrants
in other countries are very helpful.